My Life Ain't Metal.

An important part of being a metalhead, in my opinion, is expanding your musical boundaries beyond metal.

Whenever I meet metal folks these days, I ask them what they think of dubstep. This is an extremely divisive issue in the metal community, I'm sure. Personally, I'm a huge snob about dubstep. I love British groups like Burial, Distance, Skream...is DJ /rupture British? Anyway, that's not important. The question is really about Skrillex and his ilk. But whether or not you like Skrillex is not as important to me as WHY you like/dislike Skrillex.

I try hard to understand metal and how it relates to other genres. Do you? Why are so many metalheads attracted to that dubstep beat? Why were we listening to electro long before dubstep even came on the scene? How does this tie into the "no keyboards allowed in metal" attitude? What metal aspects exist in the electro space? etc. etc.

What I really want to know is this.

I listen to some really chill, quiet stuff to help me unwind sometimes. The song I'd like to share with you is this:

One, it's important to play some quiet stuff in your life to balance out the heaviness. Not because you need 'balance' or some shit like that. It just gives you a home base, like, "here's what people listen to at average volume." Then you play some metal right afterwards, and it's 10x as loud and heavy. I mean, if you're cranking it to 11 all the time, you can't appreciate that.

Two, idunno, I just love this guy. When I listen to the album, I pretend we're in a dystopian future, where the music everyone listens to is SAD POP. I mean, we're in a goddamn economic depression right now - the evidence is everywhere, but people don't understand the degree to which the 1% has fucked us over - but we're supposed to "Just Dance" and all that.

"Lady Gaga is the opiate of the masses, y'all." -- Maynard James Keenan

The 'sad pop' genre is practically non-existent on the corporate airwaves, as you'd expect. Everything is calculated by, oh god, the BIG THREE record labels (there were 4 just last year!)...they are too busy trying to put out club songs to try putting out a sad song. Growing up with the utter shite me and my generation grew up with...no wonder we turned to metal! Anything to save us from the pop scene, which offered us nothing even remotely relatable.

But yeah, this song appeals to me because of its dark take on R&B. I dig it, even though I can't explain what makes it appeal to me that would make it relatable to anyone else. Can we discuss this instead of Skrillex?